Skype crosses 100 million downloads

Well done.

Skype has truly been the one application taking VoIP to the masses. Its a phase which every technology needs to go through. The old Windows OS did it to the Personal Computer. I think Skype did it for VoIP. Though 100 mil is just a number - and I am sure many users re-download and re-install stuff all the time - and also many may have downloaded, tested and removed - but its still a commendable achievement.

I personally am a open source person - most definitely an open standards guy. So would be fair to say that am not totally convinced with the Skype model. But cannot disregard what they have done for the technology. If nothing else, Skype provided a quick kick on the back-side of SIP and other researchers.

Another major achievement of Skype was to introduce the idea of VoIP over P2P. Subsequently we saw people scramble together some code to make SIP based P2P voice clients, but nothing has really stood out thus far.

Not surprising, Skype was first written by the developers of Kazaa - which till date is the most downloaded Internet software ever.